Sens. Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp on Thursday became the first Senate Democrats to announce their support for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch -- breaking with their colleagues who have blasted President Trump's pick.

“Senators have a constitutional obligation to advice (sic) and consent on a nominee to fill this Supreme Court vacancy and, simply put, we have a responsibility to do our jobs as elected officials,” Manchin, of West Virginia, said in a statement Thursday. “I will vote to confirm him to be the ninth justice on the Supreme Court.”

Shortly afterward, Heitkamp released a statement announcing her support. "He has a record as a balanced, meticulous, and well respected jurist who understands the rule of law," the North Dakota senator said. She added that her vote "does not diminish how disturbed I am by what Republicans did to Judge Garland," former President Barack Obama's nominee who was blocked by the GOP-led Senate.

While two Democrats have now come out in favor of Gorsuch, opposition in the party runs deep. More than half of their Democratic colleagues have come out against Gorsuch -- and are planning to support a filibuster if it comes to that.

Republicans would need the support of six additional Democrats to reach 60 votes and break a filibuster. If they can't, they may employ a procedural tactic to change Senate precedent and push the nominee through.

This week, Vice President Mike Pence was in West Virginia, Manchin’s home state, urging that he vote ‘yes’ for Gorsuch.

“Throughout Judge Gorsuch’s career, he has come to his legal rulings objectively, through the letter of the law rather than through his own opinion,” Manchin said in his statement. “I hold no illusions that I will agree with every decision Judge Gorsuch may issue in the future, but I have not found any reasons why this jurist should not be a Supreme Court Justice.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on April 3. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-K.Y., said they plan to vote to confirm Gorsuch on the Senate floor on April 7.

The bigger battle will be to replace whoever dies next. Two or three of the present Justices are advanced in years. That's when the Court will tip to a conservative bias. Which is not to be feared since the conservative goal is to have a court that limits itself to interpreting and applying the law.

Which is a process that we don't seem capable of, probably due to our new constitution ... which puts sovereignty in the Supreme Court, rather than Parliament.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that Judge Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed this week to the Supreme Court but acknowledged Republicans still might not have enough support from Senate Democrats to avoid their attempts to slow or try to stop the nomination process with a filibuster.

Gorsuch, President Trump’s pick to fill the high court seat of conservative Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, will almost certainly have enough votes early this week in the GOP-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee but will struggle to get 60 votes for final confirmation by Friday. (Scalia died in February 2016.)

Republicans have 52 senators in the chamber and will need the support of eight Democrats to get Gorsuch confirmed in a straight floor vote.

Without Democratic support, McConnell could get Gorsuch confirmed with a parliamentary maneuver known as the “nuclear option," which would break the filibuster and get him confirmed on a simple 51-vote majority.

McConnell said Sunday that Gorsuch “deserves to be confirmed” and “will ultimately be confirmed.” But he would not commit to using the so-called nuclear option, arguing he’s still not sure how Democrats will vote.

“We’ll know through the course of the week,” he said. “It’s in the hands of Democrats.”

McConnell also argued, as he and fellow Republicans have repeatedly said in recent weeks, that Democrats in 2013 used parliamentary tactics to end debate and used the filibuster during the nomination process for lower court judges.

More than half of Senate Democrats already have come out against Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch — some planning to support a filibuster if it comes to that.

That means the Senate could be in for a showdown vote in early April.

With 52 Republicans and 48 Democrats in the chamber, the majority party needs eight Democrats to join them to break a filibuster (which takes 60 votes). All Republicans are expected to back the nominee. But if they can't get to 60, they could deploy the so-called "nuclear option" to lower the threshold and push through to confirmation on a simple majority -- a major change in Senate precedent.

So far, however, only three Democrats have come out saying they would support Gorsuch -- Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana.

Here’s where the rest stand, not including those who have taken no position:

Senators opposed to Gorsuch; supporting a filibuster:

1. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

2. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.

3. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.

4. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del.

5. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa.

6. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

7. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.

8. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.

9. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.

10. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.

11. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii

12. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.

13. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

14. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

15. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

16. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.

17. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

18. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.

19. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.

20. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.

21. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.

22. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.

23. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.

24. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

25. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.

26. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

27. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

28. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

29. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.

30. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

31. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.

32. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

33. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.

34. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii

35. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio

36. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.

37. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

Senators opposed to Gorsuch; position on filibuster unclear:

1. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.

2. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on April 3. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-K.Y., said they plan to vote to confirm Gorsuch on the Senate floor on April 7.

Senate Democrats have enough votes to filibuster the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, increasing the odds that majority Republicans will deploy the so-called “nuclear option” to get him confirmed.

Several senators announced their opposition to Gorsuch on Monday ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee vote. The new Gorsuch foes bring the number of Democrats willing to block his nomination to over 40 – the number needed to prevent the Senate from ending debate and advancing to a final vote.

Among the latest to come out against Gorsuch were Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, as well as Sens. Chris Coons, of Delaware, Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, and Mark Warner, of Virginia.

“Despite his impressive academic credentials, Judge Gorsuch’s record and evasive responses – even refusing to answer questions regarding his views of cases like Roe v. Wade and Citizens United – do not give me confidence that he possesses a judicial philosophy that will serve the American public well,” Warner said in a statement.

Republican leaders, however, have a way out – they can trigger what’s known as the nuclear option, by changing Senate precedent to advance to a final vote with the support of just 51 senators, as opposed to 60.

Doing so is considered a major change in the way the Senate operates, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle could take issue with the move.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has vowed to confirm Gorsuch one way or the other.

Even as Democrats like Warner voiced support for a filibuster and opposition to the nuclear option, another Democrat on Monday said he would not join his colleagues in the filibuster.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet said in a statement that, “Using the filibuster and nuclear option at this moment takes us in the wrong direction. … I will oppose efforts to filibuster the nomination, and strongly encourage my colleagues not to use the nuclear option.”

But with over 40 senators willing to oppose Gorsuch and presumably filibuster, a nuclear option showdown is increasingly likely.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Monday along party lines to endorse Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, setting up a showdown between Democratic and Republican senators in a series of final votes expected later this week.

The 20-member committee voted 11-9 for Gorsuch, President Trump’s pick for the high court seat left by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016.

“The nominee’s opponents have tried to find a fault with him that will stick. And it just hasn’t worked,” said committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who allowed all 20 members to speak before the final vote. “Judge Gorsuch is eminently qualified. He’s a mainstream judge who’s earned the universal respect of his colleagues on the bench and in the bar. He applies the law as we in Congress write it.”

Despite such praise from the GOP side, all Democrats on the committee voted against the nominee, in a sign of the clash to come as the nomination advances to the full Senate.

The chamber’s Democratic leaders appear ready to try to hold up the nomination through what's known as a filibuster. Republicans have 52 senators and would need the support of eight Democrats to reach the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster and head to a final vote.

That appears out of reach. Prior to the committee vote, more than 40 Democrats said they were willing to block the Gorsuch nomination -- increasing the likelihood that majority Republicans would use the so-called "nuclear option" to push the nomination through.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s top Democrat, returned to her party’s repeated argument that Judge Merrick Garland, former-President Barack Obama’s nominee, should have been considered for the Scalia seat, but leaders of the Republican-controlled Senate held off until after the 2016 presidential election.

Feinstein also revisited a ruling Gorsuch made on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Colorado, in which he sided with a company that fired a trucker for disobeying orders by unhitching his vehicle from a malfunctioning tractor-trailer and driving off -- after waiting hours for help in sub-zero temperatures.

“So this is not the usual nominee,” she said. “Therefore, I cannot support the nominee.”

So far, just three Senate Democrats have announced support for Gorsuch, a graduate of Columbia University, Harvard Law and Oxford University.

They are Sens. Joe Donnelly, of Indiana; Heidi Heitkamp, of North Dakota; and Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- all representing states Trump won in November and all up for re-election next year.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that Gorsuch nevertheless will be confirmed by Friday.

He was noncommittal on whether he was prepared to trigger to so-called "nuclear option," a change in precedent that would allow the Senate to break the filibuster with a simple majority of 51 votes.

But on Monday, a Republican colleague spoke bluntly and indicated the party would go that route. South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Judiciary committee member, said: “This will be the last person subject to a filibuster. … Ironically, we are going to change the rules … for somebody who has been a good judge over such a long time.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., predicted Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Gorsuch would not pass the 60-vote benchmark and argued that Trump should "try to come up with a mainstream nominee."

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat on the committee, like Feinstein argued that Gorsuch had too often sided against the “little guy.”

“In case after case, he favored corporations, lawyers and the special interest elite … over workers, consumers, people of disability and victims of discrimination,” he said.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican on the committee, said Gorsuch likely thought the firing of the trucker was “foolish.”

“But that wasn’t the question before him,” Lee said. “The law, as he carefully analyzed it, would not allow judicial intervention.”

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley took to the Senate floor just before 7 p.m. ET Tuesday vowing to talk "as long as I'm able" to protest Republicans' 2016 blockade of President Barack Obama's nominee for the seat, Merrick Garland -- in the latest disruption on the road to a vote for President Trump's nominee.

Merkley’s staff streamed the video of him on the Senate floor. So far, the Democratic senator has spoken for over 13 hours.

"Make no mistake: this is a stolen seat — & if this theft is completed, it will undermine the integrity of the court for decades," Merkley tweeted as he began.

Merkley's speech wasn't expected to delay Wednesday's debate on Trump's nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch or votes expected Thursday and Friday -- when Republicans are increasingly likely to use the so-called "nuclear option" to push through a Democratic filibuster.

Senators of both parties bemoaned the further erosion of their traditions of bipartisanship and consensus. Some were already predicting that they would end up eliminating the 60-vote requirement for legislation, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell McConnell committed Tuesday that would not happen under his watch.

He drew a distinction between legislation being filibustered and the filibuster being used against nominees, something that is a more recent development.

Gorsuch now counts 55 supporters in the Senate: the 52 Republicans, along with three moderate Democrats from states Trump won last November — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana.

SEN. MIKE LEE VOWS TO CONFIRM GORSUCH

A fourth Senate Democrat, Michael Bennet from Gorsuch's home state of Colorado, has said he will not join in the filibuster against Gorsuch but has not said how he will vote on final passage.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Fox News' "The First 100 Days" Tuesday that the GOP's use of the so-called "nuclear option" to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch is their response to the Democrats' "breaking the rules of the Senate" in 2013.

"For 230 years, up or down, simple majority [required] for Supreme Court, Cabinet, everything until [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer invented this, so it’s a fairly recent thing to filibuster executive branch appointments," McConnell told host Dana Perino. "All we’ll do faced with this filibuster is even that up so the Supreme Court confirmation process is dealt with just like it was throughout the history of the country."

Gorsuch, 49, is a 10-year veteran of a federal appeals court in Denver, where he's compiled a highly conservative record that's led Democrats to complain he sides with corporations without regards to the humanity of the plaintiffs before him.

Merkley also took issue with the Republican claim that Supreme Court justices should not be confirmed during an election year, and listed several judges in the past that were appointed during those timeframes, OregonLive.com reported.

Gorsuch set be confirmed to the Supreme Court, but will the fight over Trump's pick break the Senate?

Republicans Rally for Gorsuch at Supreme Court

A podium is set up for a Republican news conference in support of Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil M. Gorsuch on Wednesday.

Lisa MascaroBy Lisa Mascaro•Contact Reporter

April 5, 2017, 3:15 PM |Reporting from Washington

The Senate has been called dysfunctional, outdated and downright broken.

But the anticipated showdown over President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, just might inflict damages beyond repair upon the once-lofty chamber.

On Thursday, Democrats are set to mount a historic filibuster of the nomination, to quickly be followed by a once-unthinkable Republican rule change to break the logjam with a simple majority — clearing the way for Gorsuch to be confirmed Friday for a lifetime seat on the court.

What’s about to unfold is called the “nuclear option” for a reason, and the potential devastation is creating a deeply toxic political environment that threatens core Senate operations for the foreseeable future.

Now, senators worry that it’s only a matter of time before legislation will also be swiftly approved over minority objections, making the famously deliberative Senate run more like the majority-rules House.

“This is not a vote so much about Judge Gorsuch…. It’s a vote about the inability of both parties to work with each other in a substantive way,” said Douglas W. Kmiec, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University and former advisor to past administrations.

“The use of the ‘nuclear option’ won’t resolve any of the underlying difficulties,” he said. “They’ll still hate each other in the morning.”

The Senate was always supposed to be the slower-moving chamber of Congress, where the filibuster protected the rights of the minority and gave nod to the bipartisanship needed to get anything done.

It’s a revered tradition, fictionalized by Hollywood — most famously in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” — but also studied as a crucial tool of what’s called the world’s most deliberative body.

The mood around the Capitol on Wednesday was grim — “troubling,” “sad,” senators said, adding that the Founding Fathers would be ashamed.

“I fear that someday we will regret what we are about to do,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a somber speech Wednesday. “In fact, I’m confident we will.”

Yet, despite all the hand-wringing and political soul-searching, senators have not been able — so far — to change what appears to be an inevitable outcome.

Republicans are hungry for a political win, as Trump approaches the first 100 days of his presidency and Congress recesses for a two-week spring break without having repealed Obamacare or solved other top items on the White House to-do list.

And Democrats are angling for a fight. They want to show their liberal base voters they are resisting Trump’s nominee, a conservative Colorado judge who they say is too far out of the mainstream.

A loose alliance of 10 senators, Republicans and Democrats, worked over the weekend — as other Senate “gangs” have done in past standoffs — to negotiate a way around the stalemate.

But trust has been eroded in the Senate, and they could not strike the core guarantee: that the nuclear option would be off the table for the next stalemate.

Over time, though, the filibuster has been increasingly employed as a sharp tool, not just to stop nominees, but to block types of legislative measures, grinding Senate operations to a standstill.

Outside groups on both the left and right pressure senators to filibuster, harnessing the power of social media to mobilize thousands of voters to flood offices with calls and emails, and raising money to support those senators who hold the floor.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Wednesday that she knows an issue resonates with California voters when her office receives 30,000 calls. On Gorsuch, she has received 112,000 — the vast majority opposing his nomination.

But senators now worry it’s a slippery slope before another crisis forces a rule change so that it only takes 51 votes to advance legislation and other measures — rather than the 60 now needed to break a filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insists the filibuster will remain for legislation, but others are not so sure. And history proves the skeptics are probably right.

When then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) invoked the nuclear option in 2013, after Republicans pledged to filibuster all of President Obama’s nominees, the rule change applied only to judicial and executive branch picks, not Supreme Court nominations.

Republicans objected at the time, but when they became the majority, they quietly began talking among themselves about using the maneuver for the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last year.

With this strategy in mind, Republicans refused to consider Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, to replace Scalia — who died with 11 months left in the president’s term — preferring to leave the court with the vacancy so a new White House administration could fill the seat.

The argument that can be easily extended to legislation once the next must-pass bill faces the logjam of filibuster gridlock.

“There’ll be increased pressure over time for whoever’s in the majority, by their base, to get rid of the filibuster,” Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday in a brief interview. “I’m not happy about it, but it’s where we are.”

Those who have grown weary of the slow-moving Senate may cheer this week’s actions as a needed dose of modernity to kick-start what they see as a moribund institution.

A majority-rules Senate could more easily dispatch with Trump’s priorities — repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act or building the wall along the border with Mexico. If control flips, Democrats could more easily pass theirs.

Expediency, though, comes with a price, and others see a darker outcome. They see the changes in the Senate as chiseling away at the inability of the minority to halt the majority — and the Congress to provide substantial check on the executive branch, regardless of which party is in power.

“It’s very unlikely they’ll be able to keep it closeted,” said Kmiec. “They’ll pretend to do that. But then they’ll get angry at each other and it will go out the window.”

I would imagine this goes on for two days;
Then Gorsuch is confirmed on Friday via the 51 Majority?

I just don't understand why the democrats have decided to go all out over this nominee ? he doesn't seem that bad and surely worse people the republicans could of suggested

he's also filling a previously conservative judges seat so its not changing the balance and it clearly be the next opening that would truly alter the make up of the court

they've surely decided the supreme court was critical to there agenda and if its not filled with liberal judges then there agenda is at risk , they clearly had planned to use the court to further there liberal agenda . its really the only reason gay marriage is legal in heavily religious and deep red states like Alabama and Texas . they never would of allowed it if not for the court decision

They say it's revenge for the Senate's treatment of Merrick Garland, who was also a decent man, by most Democrat accounts, but he's from Chicago, which suggests that Obama's crowd know how he would perform as a judge.

Garland was nominated by Obama after Scalia died. It was in the last days of the Obama administration, in March of 2016. The election campaign was ramping up. The Republicans took refuge in what has come to be called "the Biden rule", which was that Supreme Court Justices should not have their nomination scrutinized during an election campaign. The Democrats accused them of nefarious things.

They say it's revenge for the Senate's treatment of Merrick Garland, who was also a decent man, by most Democrat accounts, but he's from Chicago, which suggests that Obama's crowd know how he would perform as a judge.

Garland was nominated by Obama after Scalia died. It was in the last days of the Obama administration, in March of 2016. The election campaign was ramping up. The Republicans took refuge in what has come to be called "the Biden rule", which was that Supreme Court Justices should not have their nomination scrutinized during an election campaign. The Democrats accused them of nefarious things.

I guess its political payback ? or the democrats are still upset they lost the election and didn't gain as many senate seats as they hoped . and they've just decided to stir up trouble on any issue possible

don't really see why there is such an issue with the nuclear option , the 60 vote mark was always a pretty high bar to reach in a highly partisan senate . if someone can get over 50 % of the senators to vote for them as a new judge that should be good enough

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